are you, anyway? What are you doing in Arcata?”
“Just a stop on a long trip down the coast, dealing with customer complaints.”
“What kind of customers?”
Larison had a whole backstopped story he could have unspooled, but he didn’t feel like it. If this wasn’t going to end the way he hoped, he didn’t want to waste any more time. He took a sip of beer and said, “The kind who’ve bought expensive data mining software and are disappointed to find out the applications don’t do what they’re supposed to.”
“Sounds like you spend a lot of time with unhappy people.”
“Yeah, but I try not to let it get me down.” He took another sip of beer and said, “You alone here?”
“Got some friends probably swinging by later.” For whatever reason, he didn’t sound happy about it.
“Can I ask you a question?”
The kid nodded. “Sure.”
“If I wanted to pick up a little local Humboldt County produce — you know, just something to help me kick back and relax after a day of dealing with unhappy customers — do you know of anywhere I could do that?”
The kid looked suddenly uneasy. “How do I know you’re not a cop?”
For the second time that night, Larison had to resist the urge to laugh. “I look like a cop to you?”
The kid nodded. “There’s something serious about you. And I can tell you’re in shape.”
Larison was glad he’d noticed. “You must not know too many cops.”
“What do you do? Weights? Seriously, you’re pretty… big.”
Christ, was the kid flirting, or just incredibly innocent? Either way, it was a turn-on.
“I do a little something different every day. But come on, can you help me out? I’m not a cop. Where do I go?”
The kid was quiet for a moment, then he said, “What’s your name?”
“Dave. And you?”
“I’m Seth.”
“Well, Seth?”
“I guess… I guess I know a few guys on campus.”
“Far from here?”
The kid shook his head. “Maybe a mile.”
Larison felt a little warmth spread out in his gut. “If I pick something up, will you share it with me?”
The kid looked at Larison, something suddenly eager in his eyes. He said, “Sure. Okay.”
No doubt, this was shaping up to be a very fine evening. There were risks, yeah, but sometimes the reward was worth it.
Larison finished his beer in a swallow. “Do we walk?”
“We could. But I’m parked out back. I know, lazy.”
Larison imagined parking on some quiet street under the shadow of the redwoods, the vehicle’s interior illuminated only by the glow of a shared joint, the feeling close, comfortable. Most of all, private. People lost their inhibitions in the dark, when they knew they were in a place where no one else could see them, when they couldn’t see themselves. The kid would get high, he’d feel relaxed… he’d let himself do what he’d secretly always wanted to. Larison felt his heartbeat kick up a notch. He said, “Sure, let’s take your car.”
They walked out, past the pool players, the bouncer, the hobos shifting around outside. They made a right, then another at the corner, moving along the sidewalk, not talking. Larison felt nervousness coming off the kid in waves and it excited him. He wondered if it was possible it was the kid’s first time. Christ, what a thought.
The sidewalk was dark, parked cars to their left, the solid facade of the building to their right. A short funnel of sorts, the kind of terrain Larison always instinctively avoided because it was too easy for the opposition to close off both ends and squeeze, as well as being popular with ordinary muggers, too. But no one knew he was here, and he pitied the random mugger who might try to rob him.
They came to an alley and made a right. Now they were behind the bar; further down, at the other end of the alley, was the back of the hotel. A few lights along the building facade to their right provided a feeble, yellowish glow, casting shadows under the Dumpsters and garbage cans lined up beneath. To their left was a single-story, freestanding shack, apparently a small office of some kind.
Halfway down the alley, a guy in a hoodie and lumberjack boots was leaning against the building, a cigarette burning in his hand. Larison logged him reflexively, noting long, greasy hair and a bad case of acne. A cook or bartender, ducking out back from one of the bars for a tobacco break? Maybe, but he wasn’t near a door. And he was watching them, not with idle curiosity or bored disinterest, but with a kind of focus Larison didn’t like at all. The hobos he’d seen out front had felt like regulars. They wouldn’t try to rob someone so close to where the cops would roust them for questioning. A drifter, like himself? Maybe. But he looked more like a student. Which would have downgraded him on Larison’s threat assessment scale, but there was that focused way he was watching them.
They made a left past the shack, stepping off the paved alley and onto bare gravel. Larison didn’t like that their footfalls were now causing audible crunching while the guy against the wall would be able to approach quietly from behind. He glanced back and sure enough, the guy had come off the wall and was moving in their direction. He was holding something long in one hand — a lead pipe, Larison thought. Which meant he didn’t have a gun. Ordinarily, this could have been fun, in a
There was a faded wooden shed on their right, a small parking lot with a half dozen cars, one of them presumably Seth’s, just beyond it. Larison was about to warn Seth there was going to be trouble and pull him around to the other side of the shed, from where Larison would be able to ambush the guy with the pipe, when another guy in a hoodie stepped out from the spot where Larison had been planning to go. This one, too, gripped a pipe. He smacked it against his palm and grinned, revealing a set of crooked teeth. “What the fuck do we have here?” he said in a weirdly squeaky voice.
Larison stopped short and resisted the urge to create distance and draw the Glock. The pieces all fell instantly into place:
All of which Larison understood in less time than it had taken Squeaky to finish talking. And he understood, too, from that time when he was a teenager, that the object of the game for these guys wasn’t just to inflict a beating. That was the actual act, yes, but they would also want to enjoy the foreplay of fear and humiliation.
Which was a shame for them, really. Because Larison had never been into foreplay. He was all about getting straight to the main event.
He heard footsteps on the gravel behind him. In his peripheral vision, Larison saw Seth edging away. Squeaky smacked the pipe against his palm again and looked past Larison at his approaching buddy. “You see this?” he said. “We’ve got—”
Larison stepped in. He swept his left hand up, outer edge forward, taking hold of the pipe alongside Squeaky’s grip, and shot a right palm heel up under Squeaky’s jaw. Squeaky’s head snapped back and Larison raked his eyes with his fingers, simultaneously twisting the pipe counterclockwise, ripping it free from his grip. Squeaky made a weird squawking sound and Larison changed direction with the pipe, getting his shoulder under it, bringing it up like a surface-to-air missile and stabbing it into Squeaky’s balls. Squeaky rose up on his toes from the force of the impact and the breath was driven out of him. His eyes bulged so violently that if Larison hadn’t known better he would have thought they might pop out.
Larison pulled back the pipe as though reversing a sword thrust and spun to face the first guy. Acne Boy’s face was a mask of confusion and fear. He had skidded to a halt when he saw what happened to his buddy, and was now starting frantically to back peddle. Which he was able to do only at about twenty percent of Larison’s forward speed. In other words, too slow.
Larison switched the pipe to his right hand and felt himself grinning. He reminded himself he had to hold
